Three Lessons I Would Like To Teach The World, Part II

What are the facts? Again and again and again--what are the facts? Shun wishful thinking, ignore divine revelation, forget what "the stars foretell", avoid opinion, care not what the neighbours think, never mind the unguessable "verdict of history"--what are the facts, and to how many decimal places? You pilot always into an unknown future; facts are your single clue. Get the facts!

--Robert A Heinlein, "The Notebooks of Lazarus Long"

If only I always lived up to this lesson. Still, you teach what you have to learn...

A while ago I walked into a Coles bookstore and asked when the reissue of Robert Heinlein's Expanded Universe was due out in paperback. The girl behind the counter--ostensibly someone hired, at least in part, for her knowledge of a wide range of things literary--had no idea who Robert Heinlein was. I wasn't sure whether the shock I felt should be paired with pity or contempt. I settled for informing her how lucky she was to have the full breadth of that man's works ahead of her.

Robert Anson Heinlein (1907-1988) was the first honoured "Grand Master" of science fiction, and one of the top-selling authors that genre has ever seen, right up there with Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke.
Many people read Heinlein--specifically his juveniles--and are stuck by the cliches, until they reflect and realize he wrote many of these "kids' tales" in the 1950s and thus invented the cliches. Whenever a children's writer uses an extraordinarily intelligent and resourceful teenage protagonist, she's mining Heinlein's well; most of Heinlein's juveniles were initally considered too sophisticated and difficult for younger readers, until they sold through a dozen or more reprintings.
Anyway, I'm not here to expostulate on the work and life of Heinlein, and if you, too, are lucky enough yet to experience reading his novels, for God's sake stop reading this blog and get thee to a library. Suffice it to say the man was a genius--he invented the waterbed, the spacesuit and the waldo--and he married someone he freely admitted was much smarter than he was. Even when you disagree with his take on the world (which will probably be quite often, since the man was the epitome of an iconoclast), you should probably take a minute to make sure you're clear on why.

About that quote up there. It was penned in 1973, and it's never been more true than it is today.
We as a society have never had such easy access to so much information--the vast majority of which, to put it bluntly, is bullshit. There is a tendency to render bullshit into fact, depending on whence the bullshit came: "It must be true! I saw it on TV!" or, more commonly now, "It must be true! I saw it online!"
Once a week if not more often, I get something in my inbox that purports to be fact. It could be pictures of the Space Shuttle exploding, taken from space. It might be a political expose on how Canada pays refugees more than senior citizens. Or it might be a threat about some strange new virus that will disable my computer if I open a certain message.
The first thing I do when I get one of these things is check out Hoaxbusters, which is the definitive list of Internet scams. There I find out that, in the first case, those pictures are actually stills from the movie Armageddon, and in the third case, I am informed told that any real virus warning (a) will almost never turn up in my email, (b) if it does, it will have a verifiable PGP signature on it and (c) it will most certainly not ask me to "forward the info to all my friends".
The second case is more problematic. It sounds perfectly possible. It took me about fifteen minutes with Google, searching several different sites, to discover that most of the "facts" in this expose are wrong. Of course, then I had to do some further research to assess the veracity of the counterinformation. How many people have the time or inclination to follow up stray email? The only reason I did, in that second case, was that I was preparing to write a furious blog entry decrying this abomination and it occurred to me I'd better "get the facts".
Oh, yes, I've got plenty of biases, and especially in matters political, I'm apt to ignore them and get burned. You have to admit, it's difficult getting the facts out of people who seem to be trained to equivocate on everything.
Witness the now-infamous Liberal attack ad--"Soldiers. With Guns. In our cities. In Canada."--that have so enraged military personnel. Since news of that commercial hit the blogosphere, we've heard

• that it was a "mistake" and "crafted by an idiot"
• that it was "never intended to air"
• that it did, or did not, appear on Quebec television (about the only way to ascertain that is from footage off somebody's VCR)
• that Paul Martin never saw that ad
• that Paul Martin did see the ad, but disapproved of it, saying it "wasn't very good"
• that Paul Martin says his intent was to show that Stephen Harper would spread our forces too thin (how, exactly, that's supposed to be implied from either the text or the subtext of the spot is so very unclear)

I'm left with precious few facts, and lots of suppositions--some of which could very easily be wrong. But I do know that even now, we have "Soldiers. With Guns. In Our Cities"...they're called reservists, and they take rightful pride in the job they do, helping out whenever disaster strikes.

"We did not make this up". Cue Joey from Friends: "So now you're lying about lying."

And to be fair, one of the biggest "ouch" moments for Stephen Harper in the debate the other night was Paul Martin saying the Conservative leader once called Canada a "northern European welfare state in the worst sense of the term". Yes, Harper did actually say this; the Liberals did not make this up. He now claims it was tongue in cheek...but he sure sounded serious at the time. You can read his speech here . Although he says his views have "evolved" since, I wonder just how much. In any case, the speech is a fascinating glimpse into the mind of our likely next Prime Minister.

Geez, I just can't seem to get off the political soapbox. Please forgive me. I'm finding the politics absolutely gripping lately.

Religion is another area where truth becomes muddy. Often enough, people will cite a particular holy text as divine truth. This gets me to thinking of that 'telephone' game I used to play as a kid. You know the one: where Susie starts off saying "The two blue Foos live in the Foo Zoo" and after twenty kids have had their way the message ends up looking like "The new Lou's Brews is mighty fine booze". I picture generations of monks playing telephone with their Bibles, errors compounding upon errors down the years until nobody has any idea what the original actually said.

The Book of Genesis is often thought to be a literal history of the beginning of the world. It only makes any kind of sense at all if it's seen as a history--fanciful in places-- of one tribe, the Jews; else who did Cain marry? (No fair saying 'it's a mystery' or 'God works in wondrous ways, etc'...we're looking for truth here.) Hard to find, after so many years. That's why I reject any faith that places divine authority in one book, or on one path.

People decry moral relativism in today's world, not understanding that morals have always been in flux. Every generation charts its own general moral course, and each individual in that generation does the same. And that's a good thing, because if I've learned anything at all in thirty three years on this planet, I've learned that LIFE IS CHANGE. Stand still, morally or spiritually, and perish. By all means listen to your elders: they've learned valuable lessons. But don't take everything they say as immutable Truth. Live your own truth instead.

Basically, Heinlein's quote up there can be boiled down simply to think for yourself. It's a good thing to do.